The Legislative Yuan on Thursday held a public hearing on the draft landscape act. Outside the legislature building, teachers and students from universities’ landscape architecture departments, as well as academics and association members, were arguing with members of civil, structural and geotechnical engineering associations over the proposed bill.
In 1995, the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel caused intensive debates after saying that “people in Taiwan are living in a pigsty.” Is Taiwan’s living environment better now?
In recent years, it has often been said that “the most beautiful part of Taiwan is its people.” Is that perhaps because Taiwan is so ugly that it can only be covered by talking about the human touch?
Internet users have shared pictures comparing urban scenery during the Japanese colonial rule with the scenery today. The contrast is like the difference between heaven and hell. What an embarrassment.
When tourists walk out of the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, all they see are the steel-roofed factories, fallow farmland and large billboards along the freeways. When they look down from the top of Taipei 101, all they see is the mess of illegal rooftop structures everywhere. When they visit the countryside or go hiking in the mountains, all they see is treeless mountains devastated by humans. It is very difficult to give a reasonable explanation for all of these.
The old Botanical Garden in downtown Taipei has gradually become the backyard of major conglomerates and the garden of the surrounding luxury buildings. After the construction of the Yuanta I Pin Building, visitors can no longer see the Presidential Office from the garden. The skyline with official buildings from the Qing Dynasty has been destroyed, while it is now impossible to find a contiguous background of blue sky. The Taipei Dome is rising between two historical sites — the Taipei Songshan Tobacco Factory and National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. The National Palace Museum is planning to expand into the open plaza in front of it. Other places where similar damage has been done to the landscape are too numerous to count.
Taiwanese work hard to make money and then they spend huge sums traveling in Europe, the US or Japan. Why can Taiwanese not make Taiwan more beautiful and allow people to live with dignity? By doing so, people would be able to profit from ecotourism as well.
Protecting the landscape means protecting forests, fresh-water sources, the soil and the nation’s living space, and it prevents natural disasters.
On the other hand, the draft landscape act would create more jobs for “green-collar workers.” All technical professions related to modifying open spaces have their own dedicated legislation. There is legislation for architects, urban planners, and civil and geotechnical engineers — but not for landscape architects.
Draft landscape and landscape architect acts are not intended to steal the work from other professions. Rather, they are intended to expand and improve the market. Space-related technical professions are closely interconnected. As Taiwan’s higher education emphasizes “general professional education,” all space-related professionals should divide the tasks among themselves and work together, instead of holding each other back.
The chaotic environmental situation needs a landscape act. The current draft has been delayed for 20 or 30 years — Taiwan’s environment will continue to deteriorate if it fails to pass during the final session of the incumbent legislature.
Pan Han-shen is chief strategy officer of the Taiwan Green Party.
Translated bu Eddy Chang
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